Kerry Washington Is A Belle On The Cover Of Elle April 2016 Issue

Kerry Washington popularly known as Olivia Pope graces the April 2016 issue of Elle magazine.

Photographed by Dan Martensen and styled by Samira Nasr, Kerry is a casual chic in a grey sweatshirt from Shinola that reads: Cassius Clay. She also looked the part of a beach goddess wearing high-end fashion labels including Versace, Chloe and Altuzarra amongst others.

The Scandal superstar opens up about her new role in ‘Confirmation’, motherhood, being friends with Shonda Rhimes and lots more.

Read excerpts from her interview below;

On how playing Olivia Pope helped her handle motherhood:

“Even though Olivia Pope has obviously made the decision that she is not a mom,” Washington says, in reference to the 2015 midseason finale, in which—spoiler—Pope gets an abortion, “playing her made me feel like I could be a mom. Because she knows there’s always another way—there’s always a way to fix it, there’s always a way to solve it, to win. And I feel like playing her made me feel like, All right, I can do it. I will figure out how to juggle it all.”

On the importance of events that inspired ‘Confirmation’ :

“This moment was so important because it created a language around women being able to protect themselves. The behavior that Anita Hill described was going on in a lot of offices throughout the country, and most people didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. But this created awareness around that and around the need for women’s voices to be heard in our public spaces, both testifying before Congress and sitting on the committee. It really was such a huge cultural shift.”

On being friends with her Mentor Shonda Rhimes:

“She’s been such an amazing resource, as a mom, and as a working mom…I am on one show and I have one kid, and she has three shows and three kids.” Right now, she says, departing from her no-family-talk rule, her husband is at home listening to the audio version of Rhimes’s book, the first-person self-help journey Year of Yes. “We bought it for a bunch of people for Christmas because I feel like it’s a little bit of required reading.”

The issue of this magazine will hit the newsstands on Thursday, March 17th 2016.